Quotes on Belief

Quotes on Belief

Peter Y. Chou
WisdomPortal.com

Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of today. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its soul.
— Francis Thompson (1859-1907), "Shelley", The Dublin Review, July 1908

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
— Charles Dickens (1812-1870), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Book I, Ch. 1

History is nothing more than the belief in the senses, the belief in falsehood.
— Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), The Twilight of the Idols "Reason" in Philosophy I

Hope is the belief, more or less strong, that joy will come; desire is the wish it may come. There is no word to designate the remembrance of joys past.
— Sydney Smith (1771-1845), Lady Holland's Memoir (1855), Vol. I, Ch. 6

The chronic melancholy which is taking hold of the civilized races with the decline of belief in a beneficent power.
— Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), Ch. 18

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
— Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1950), Prejudices, Third Series (1922), Ch. 14

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
— Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), Under Western Eyes (1911), Part II, 4

O Virgin clean,
To whom all sinners lift their hands on high,
Made whole in faith through Thee their go-between.
In this belief I will to live and die.
— François Villon (1430-1484), The Greater Testament: Ballad of Homage to Our Lady (1462)

Stands not within the prospect of belief.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Macbeth (1606), Act I, Sc. 3, line 74

One in whom persuasion and belief
Had ripened into faith, and faith become
A passionate intuition.
— William Wordsworth (1770-1850), The Excursion (1814), Book IV

It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world.
— Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), Ghosts (1881), Act II

A man must not swallow more beliefs than he can digest.
— Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), The Dance of Life (1923), Chap. 5

I had rather believe all the fables in the legends and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.
— Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Of Atheism (1625)

It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.
— John Burroughs (1837-1921), The Light of the Day. The Modern Skeptic (1900)

So have I heard, and do in part I believe it.
But, look, the morn in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Hamlet (1601), Act I, Sc. 1, line 165

When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Sonnet 138 (1609)

"There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age,
I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as
six impossible things before breakfast."
— Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), Alice Through the Looking-Glass (1872), Chap. 5

Every time a child says "I don't believe in fairies" there is a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead... Do you believe in fairies? If you believe, clap your hands!
— James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937), Peter Pan (1904), Act I & Act IV

You have to believe in happiness,
or happiness never comes.
I know that a bird chirps none the less,
when all he finds is crumbs.

You have to believe the buds will blow,
believe in the grass in days of snow.
Ah, that's the reason a bird can sing—
On his darkest day he believes in Spring.

You have to believe in happiness,
it isn't an outward thing.
The Spring never makes the song, i guess.
As much as the song the spring.

Aye, many a heart could find content,
if it saw the joy on the road it went.
The joy ahead when it had to grieve.
For the joy is there-but, you have to believe.
— Douglas Malloch (1877-1938), You Have to Believe (1938)

The temerity to believe in nothing.
— Ivan S. Turgeniev (1818-1883), Fathers and Sons (1862), Chap. 14

I believe in one God and no more, and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.
— Thomas Paine (1737-1809), The Age of Reason (1793), Part I

What I can't see, I never will believe in!
— Samuel John Stone (1839-1900), Soliloquy of a Rationalistic Chicken, Harper's Monthly (September 1875)

Believe It or Not.
— Robert Leroy Ripley (1893-1949), Title of syndicated newspaper feature (1919)

Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.
— Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Two Precepts of Charity (1273)

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.
— Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), Essays: Book I. Chap. 31, Of Divine Ordinances (1580)

Some impose upon the world that they believe that which they do not; others, more in number, make themselves believe that they believe, not being able to penetrate into what t is to believe.
— Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), Essays: Book II. Chap. 12, Apology for Raimond Sebond (1580)

It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.
— Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.), Fragment 385 (5th century B.C.)

We believe no evil till the evil's done.
— Jean de la Fontaine (1621-1695), Fables. Book I (1668), Fable 8

What can we do with those people who will not believe anything unless it is in print? I would as soon quote one of my friends as I would Aulus Gellius or Macrobius.
— Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), Essays: Book III. Chap. 13, Of Experience (1595)

How shall the dead arise, is no question of my Faith; to believe only possibilities, is not Faith, but mere philosophy.
— Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), Religio Medici. Part I, Sect. XLVIII (1642)

A man who is always ready to believe what is told him will never do well.
— Petonius (died circa 66 A.D.), Satyricon, Sect. 43

— Peter Y. Chou
Mountain View, 1-9-2009